Here I Am Read Online Free PDF Page A

and told him, “You realize that’s not even honey. It’s agave.”
    “I want Mom.”
    “We’re giving her a day off.”
    “A day off from
us
?” Benjy asked.
    “No, no. She never needs time off from you guys.”
    “Time off from
you
?” Max asked.
    “One of my friends, Joey, has two dads. But babies come out of vagina holes. Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why did you lie to me?”
    “No one lied to anyone.”
    “I want a frozen burrito.”
    “The freezer’s broken,” Jacob said.
    “For breakfast?” Deborah asked.
    “Brunch,” Max corrected.
    “
Sí se puede,”
Irv said.
    “I could run out and get you one,” Deborah offered.
    “Frozen.”
    Over the previous months, Benjy’s eating habits had veered toward what might be called unrealized foods: frozen vegetables (as in, still frozen when eaten), uncooked oatmeal, unboiled ramen noodles, dough, raw quinoa, dry macaroni with unreconstituted cheese powder sprinkled on top. Beyond adjusting shopping lists, Jacob and Julia never talked about it; it felt too psychological to touch.
    “So what did Sammy do?” Irv asked, his mouth full of gluten.
    “I’ll tell you later.”
    “Frozen burrito, please.”
    “There might not be a later.”
    “Apparently, he wrote some bad words on a piece of paper in class.”
    “Apparently?”
    “He says he didn’t do it.”
    “Well, did he?”
    “I don’t know. Julia thinks so.”
    “Whatever the reality, and whatever each of you believes, you guys have to approach it together,” Deborah said.
    “I know.”
    “And remind me what a bad word is?” Irv said.
    “You can imagine.”
    “In fact I can’t. I can imagine bad
contexts—
”
    “The words and the context of Hebrew school definitely didn’t jibe.”
    “Which words?”
    “Does it really matter?”
    “Of course it really matters.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Deborah said.
    “Let’s just say the n-word was featured.”
    “I want a frozen—What’s the n-word?”
    “Happy now?” Jacob asked his father.
    “He used it actively or passively?” Irv asked.
    “I’ll tell you later,” Max said to his little brother.
    “There’s no passive use of that word,” Jacob said to Irv. “And no, you won’t,” he said to Max.
    “There might not be a later,” Benjy said.
    “Did I really raise a son who refers to a word as
that word
?”
    “No,” Jacob said, “you didn’t raise a son.”
    Benjy went to his grandma, who never said no: “If you love me you’ll get me a frozen burrito and tell me what the n-word is.”
    “And what was the context?” Irv asked.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Jacob said, “and we’re done talking about it.”
    “Nothing could matter more. Without context, we’d all be monsters.”
    “N-word,” Benjy said.
    Jacob put down his fork and knife.
    “OK, since you asked, the context is Sam watching you make a fool of yourself on the news every morning, and watching you being made a fool of on late shows every night.”
    “You let your kids watch too much TV.”
    “They watch hardly any.”
    “Can we go watch TV?” Max asked.
    Jacob ignored him and went back at Irv: “He’s suspended until he agrees to apologize. No apology, no bar mitzvah.”
    “Apologize to whom?”
    “Premium cable?” Max asked.
    “Everyone.”
    “Why not go all the way and extradite him to Uganda for some scrotal electrocution?”
    Jacob handed a plate to Max and whispered something in his ear. Max nodded and left the table.
    “He did something wrong,” Jacob said.
    “Exercising his freedom of speech?”
    “Freedom of
hate
speech.”
    “Have you even banged a teacher’s desk yet?”
    “No, no. Absolutely not. We had a talk with the rabbi, and now we’re fully in salvage-the-bar-mitzvah mode.”
    “You had a
talk
? You think
talk
got us out of Egypt or Entebbe? Uh-uh. Plagues and Uzis. Talk gets you a good place in line for a shower that isn’t a shower.”
    “Jesus, Dad. Always?”
    “Of course always. ‘Always’ so